Training For Jab Endurance

If you want to maintain stamina while executing the jab, you need to strengthen the stabiliser muscles of the shoulder region. If these are weak, your jab just becomes a floppy mess. In addition to the stabiliser muscles you need also to strengthen the static holding capability of the anterior deltoids. the front delts are often quite strong due to being trained in movements like the bench press and shoulder press. But often they lack of stamina and static Holding Power.

So to develop a jab which can last for five rounds of 5 minutes you need to strengthen these two sets of muscles. The best way of doing this is through high repetition work with hand weights or fairly Light dumbbells. The objective would be just a mimic the action of the jab and keep it going for sets of 20 to 60 seconds at a time.

If you’ve not done this before you will find it quite difficult even if you have a good bench press. You are training these small but important muscles in a different way. If you are quite strong on pressing movements, you probably have a high propensity of fast twitch muscle fibers. However you may be lacking the slow twitch endurance muscle fibers that are needed to sustain repeated bouts of jabs.

Working with weights that are fairly light is necessary for this exercise. We are not here trying to develop absolute strength or power, but endurance. If you think about it, your arm doesn’t weigh that much. If you attempted this exercise with heavier weights you would be moving into a different type of strength training which we will leave for a later article. But for concentrating on maintaining a steady job for up to 25 minutes, you need to work on stamina and endurance first of all.

How to train for jab endurance

To start with I suggest that you use light dumbbells and merely punch into the air for rounds of 30 seconds for each arm. Even if you only jab with your left, it would be helpful to train both sides of the body. This is to maintain muscular balance and also strengthen the muscles of the opposite shoulder. Work 30 seconds per side until you fatigue. On your first session try and go for five sets. Over the course of the next few weeks you want to try and work up to being able to sustain this sort of work for 15 to 25 minutes.

Another effective, method of training endurance for the jab is to hold fairly heavy hand weights and punch the heavy bag at the same time. Remember to use a snappy motion to bring your arm back as fast as you can to guard position. This will help you do two things at once: build endurance and also make sure that you sustain power. Of course there is no point in having a jab which merely tickles somebody’s nose! If you train with the heavy bag at the same time, you get a good idea if you are maintaining enough force in your punches as well.